Name: 80 x 64, Acrylic on canvas, XXXXXXX, 2000
Family members come together to celebrate their adolescent sons at a Massai initiation ceremony into adulthood after circumcision. Stephen was fortunate to go to one being held outside Arusha in Tanzania. There, the youths begin their courtships by dancing and showing off their strength and agility to the watching girls and vice versa. He also witnessed a more private part of the ceremony where the boys sat in an intensely hot, smoky, mud hut whilst the older men sang songs about each and spat beer as a blessing. Stephens’s subject was one of the helpers who provided the families the in incredibly strong locally brewed banana beer.
